Congratulations to Marcela Duque, who defended her doctoral dissertation on April 25th! Her topic was "Iconic Thinking in Plato's Phaedrus," and her director was Associate Professor Cristina Ionescu of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
Marcela Duque was born and raised in Medellin, Columbia. She received her bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Navarra, Spain in 2012 and her master’s degree in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America in 2020. She enjoys poetry and hiking. After graduation, Ms. Duque will move to Madrid, Spain to teach at the Francisco de Vitoria University.
Dissertation Abstract:
The myth of the soul in the Phaedrus is Plato’s poetic masterpiece. Not only is it rich in images, but it also speaks of how images can lead the philosophical soul toward the knowledge of the highest beings. This interrelationship between imagery and rational inquiry prompts the question: What does the blend of poetry and philosophy in the Phaedrus say about the nature of philosophy?
In this dissertation I propose the notion of “iconic thinking” to capture the interplay between dialectic and imagery in the dialogue. By “iconic thinking” I mean a way of grasping and using ordinary appearances as tools for thinking about the reality of which they are imperfect but recognizable images. Some of these images are visual, such as the beauty of a face, and some are verbal, such as the analogies, metaphors, and myths that are inextricable from Plato’s writings, and predominant in the Phaedrus.
I argue that philosophical thinking is iconic, insofar as we are dealing with images in the process of getting to know the Forms, and that an iconic grasp of reality is not only an epistemic goal, but also an ethical one. The effort to attain the ideal of imitating the gods also entails an exercise in iconic thinking. Beautiful images—both visual and verbal—awaken in the soul a desire that attunes it to the paradigmatic and divine reality that they signify. This attunement is the ethical correlate of the ontological affinity between the soul and the Forms. As the soul becomes more attuned to the Forms, it attains a better grasp of them. Philosophy is, then, not merely an intellectual discipline but a way of life—one that embodies a form of love, expressed through philosophical friendship and a shared devotion to the highest beings.
An iconic approach to reality is contrasted with an idolatrous approach, which fails to grasp the intentional nature of the image. This is analogous to the idolatrous approach to love and writing criticized in the dialogue. While icons mediate between the visible and the invisible, an idolatrous grasp takes as ultimate what can only be rightly understood in the context of a larger whole. This whole is often best expressed in the synoptic function of an iconic image, which embodies the holistic view that the philosopher seeks.